THE ART OF TIME MANAGEMENT

How often have you felt that you have been busy the whole day and yet you have not accomplished much?  How often have you felt that you require more than 24 hours in a day?  How often you have felt that you seem to be helping everyone, but your work is left behind?  And Finally, how often you have been told that you need to work on your Time Management?

Has anyone explained to you about Time Management?  Is Time Management just planning your day, week, month, year in advance?  Is it about prioritising?  Is it about setting goals?  What is it, then?  Time Management is nothing but managing your time, i.e., structuring your daily work routine and work habits. But the question is how?

To start with, one need to understand the Time Stealers associated with one’s work. If you manage to overcome this, you would surely be stress-free and efficient at work. Managers and other Senior level executives will have more time-stealers to deal with. So, let us look at some of the common time-stealers in a normal work environment. 

Interruptions – Telephone:  On most days, you might be making or receiving several calls that diverts your mind from doing the actual planned work for the day.  Here are some tips to handle this.

• Plan your calls, make a brief note of what you want to say and what you want to find out. 
• If you have several phone calls to make, make them in one burst so that you can concentrate on your work once these are off your mind.  Never hold on to a call, instead agree on a time to call back.  If someone is unavailable, find out the best time to Call them back.  If you need to make regular calls, agree upon a mutually beneficial time.
• If you are asked for information and you do not have it at hand, don’t look for it while you are on the call, instead arrange a time to call back later with the information.  This will save lot of time.

Interruptions – Visitors: For most managers, the common problem is unexpected Visitors.  How many have you heard someone saying, “Have you got a minute”?  Here are some tips to handle this.

• Establish at the start why they have come to see you.  This will help you focus on the actual purpose of the conversation.  If he is your colleague, stand when they enter the room, so that they too remain standing.  This helps in them finishing the conversation quickly. 
• If you cannot really get them out of your office, leave the office yourself.
• If it is necessary for you to deal personally with them, then suggest a later meeting at your convenience.

Emails: Often, people tend to have their Outlook or Webmail open during office hours to view the official emails instantly.  In modern day, tech-driven work culture, email plays a great role and is one of the biggest time-stealers.  There are two aspects to it, namely, Checking Emails and Handling Emails.  Here are some tips to handle this.

• Have a fixed time to check and reply emails, twice or thrice a day.  If there is anything urgent, the sender will call you.  So, you need not worry about it and assume every email to be urgent.
• Create Folders for each department, Vendor, Customer, etc and assign Rules in Outlook or Filters in Webmail to move the emails to the folder automatically.  These are easy to do it.
• If you normally forward lot of emails to your colleague or subordinate, write a simple macro and have it as an Icon so that when the icon is clicked the email along with the attachment will go automatically.
• Instruct your subordinates to use agreed PREFIX in the Subject of their emails.  Then create search folders based on these PREFIX text.  Prefix text generally can be “TO REVIEW”, “TO REPLY”,” FOR ACTION” etc.  Once the rules are running, all the emails will go to the Search folder created for each PREFIX.  This will help you prioritize while replying.  

The Inability to say ‘NO’: Some of the most stressed people lack the skill to say ‘NO’ for the fear of upsetting people.  Remember always, if people can dump their work or problem on to your shoulders, they will surely do it.  Here are few tips to manage this.

• Think first and decide if you are the right person for the requested task.
• Do you have enough time to take on another task or assignment?
• Do not be afraid to say ‘NO’.  It is better to say NO rather than saying YES and not able to finish the Task.

Delay in Decision-making:  The fear of failure, fear of unknown, lethargy and lack of confidence often leads to delay in decision making.  This is the worst of all the time stealers.  Indecisiveness is dangerous.  You need to learn to make decisions.  Your ability to make decisions will increase your image as a leader over your staff and colleagues.  The only solution for this is to equip yourself with data and content that are required to take a decision.  This should be backed with Trust on your ability and that of your team and colleagues.  Suspicion will not take you anywhere and will only delay the decision-making further.

Ineffective Delegation: Improper or lack of delegation of work and authority often forces you to spend time on these tasks and assignments.   Delegation of work is one of the best principles to follow as it not only helps increase the moral of your team but also helps you reduce your workload.  The following points are to be considered while delegating the work:

• If a member of your staff can do a job 80% as well as you can, then delegate it. 
• Avoid detailed explanations when not required. 
• Do not over explain the task with an assumption that your staff might not have understood properly.  This will only exhibit lack of Trust.

Lack of Prioritising or Planning:  If things are not prioritized then too much time needs to be spent on Minor and unimportant things.  Most people know what they want but do not have a plan to achieve it except their sheer hard work.  Here are some tips to achieve this.

• Set Goals (End-results) for your tasks
• Avoid detailed plan when it is not necessary.  This is surely a waste of time.
• Estimate a time for the task and check your progress against your own time estimate
• Anticipate and allow time for possible problems of the unknown.
• Decide on the appropriate time of the day to complete a certain task.
• Use a To-Do-List or any of the task management applications to remind you and organize your tasks.
• Prioritize your work by using a scale of 1 to 5 or A to Z and stick to the priorities.

There are many more dimensions and factors that one need to consider and follow for effective time-management.  Time-stealers are one of them.  The above-mentioned points are common in nature and will be applicable to people working at levels.  There are specific time-stealers as one goes up in the management ladder.

Time-Management is not difficult to follow.  It is more about discipline and willingness to make that change.  Time-Management is not just related to one’s performance at work.  It is directly related to stress levels as well.  How much time one spends at work is not important, how one times his work is very important.  The results will be appreciable in the later.

(The above article was written for publication in Dec. 2018 issue of PRINCE'S VOICE - my Community eMagazine.)